"Schlunke's life, like his range as a writer, was virtually confined to the wheat and sheep country of the Riverina, its towns and its people. He described the taciturn farmers and farm labourers (especially those of the sober-minded German community), the pastors, schoolteachers, bank managers, stock-and-station agents and the womenfolk with a gentle, dry and mildly satirical humour. A number of his stories were about Italian prisoners of war who worked as farm hands during World War II. He published two collections of stories, The Man in the Silo (Sydney, 1955) and The Village Hampden (Sydney, 1958). Some of his stories were translated and published in Germany, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Schlunke also wrote five novels, though none appeared in book form. Two of them, 'Rosenthal' and 'Foray on Freeling', were serialized in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1939, and 'Feather Your Nest' in the Bulletin in 1954. His best work, 'Rosenthal', told the story of three generations of German-Australian farmers: Adolph Weismann who established Rosenthal, his son Karl, and grandson Otto (Schlunke himself) on whom the story centred. An impressive chronicle of the effects of fundamental Lutheranism on its adherents, and a compelling study of a rural childhood, it 'glows', according to one critic, 'as does all Schlunke's writing, with affection for the landscape and the rural life'. As a regional writer, Schlunke has been favourably compared with F. D. Davison and Peter Cowan. Schlunke's unpublished diaries are very georgic; they provide a valuable record of his literary progress and of the practicalities of farming in mid-twentieth century New South Wales. Recognition largely eluded Schlunke during his lifetime. The tyranny of the farmer's routine meant that he rarely left Hope Vale. Ill health dogged him for much of his life, and he suffered from depression. On 18 November 1960 he shot himself in the head at his Reefton property while 'his mind was unbalanced'. He was buried with Anglican rites in Temora cemetery. His wife (who contributed poems to the Bulletin), and their daughter and two sons survived him. A selection from Schlunke's first two collections, with seven additional tales, was published posthumously as Stories of the Riverina (Sydney, 1965)." (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/schlu...)